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Another Potential Market for Indie Authors – Audio Books – Part 2

This is the second part of my post on considering your book for production as an audio book. If you want to read the first part, you can find it HERE.

In Part 1 of this post, I talked about finding a voice actor on ACX. I’ll pick up in this part with what to expect once you have submitted a proposal to a voice actor.

Let’s assume that you receive an audition from a voice actor for a sample of your work and you like what you hear and want to make a proposal to have him/her record your book.

The audition dashboard shown below is an example of what it will look like after you indicate that you like the audition.

If your offer is accepted, you’ll see something that looks like this:

As you can see, this view gives you a synopsis of your deal with the audio book producer (voice actor). It shows when the first 15 minutes are due. This first 15 minutes is an important milestone.

Reviewing the first 15 minutes

Your voice actor/producer will submit the first 15 minutes of your book to you by the date you specified in your offer. Once your receive it, there are some very important things to look for.

Tone of voice and pacing:

When I received the audition that I ended up liking for Frankly Speaking, I gave the voice actor some feedback on his tone and pacing. He was fairly new to audio books and his tone and pacing were very announcer-like. This was great for his former career as an on-air radio personality. I was able to give him this feedback in a very positive way and he came through by re-recording the first 15 minutes.

Pronunciations:

My last name is no picnic to pronounce. To me, it sounds like it’s spelled, Massenzio, but I’ve been pronouncing it all of my life. I’ve kept a list of some of the funniest pronunciations. The best was from a nun in Catholic school during the fourth grade who referred to me as Mr. Ma-sneezio. She did not appreciate me saying ‘God Bless You’ instead of ‘present’ during that first roll call. The class laughed, however.

During the first iteration of the recording of Blood Orange, the voice actor pronounced it mah-sehn-ZEE-oh with the emphasis on the third syllable. It should be mah-SEHN-zee-oh with the second syllable emphasized. I know this may sound nit-picky, but I wanted to make sure it was right.

Another issue that cropped up was the pronunciation of character names. I have a character named Alex Figueroa in Blood Orange. Initially, the voice actor started out pronouncing it correctly, but in some instances, he switched to Figurerro.

In both instances, I gave this feedback and the issues were corrected (for the most part, but more on that later).

Character Dialog:

One thing that impressed me very much about the voice actor for Blood Orange was his ability to voice characters with a Syracuse accent. You may not think that there is a distinct accent for Upstate New York. There is, however, and it is very different than a traditional New York City accent. He nailed it.

From the sample of Frankly Speaking, however, I have a character named Clifford Jones, III. He is a surfer/lawyer/computer genius. When I heard the 15 minute audio sample, however, the Georgia accent he had was a bit cartoonish. I was visualizing a Matthew McConaughey kind of subtle twang with some underlying intelligence. Instead, I got an over-the-top Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard television show. He took the feedback on this very well and did a nice job on the re-record.

Once you are happy with the first 15 minutes, you can approve it and you will see something like this on the project dashboard on ACX:

After hearing the first 15 minutes of my book recorded as I envisioned it, an exciting feeling came over me. This milestone, however, is just the beginning of some intensive work that is yet to come.

In Part 3 of this series, I’ll be going over some of that work.

I hope this series is helpful to you. Your comments and anecdotes about your experience are welcome as always.

As an ex-stage-actor, this is fascinating to me. I always wondered how the talent and the jobs got together for audiobooks.. As far as your NAME – it’s your brand as well. NOT picky at all, IMHO, It simply must be perfectly pronounced for your own book!!

Funny about the accents – but so important in setting the right tone for your readers. Having spent a great deal of time in the South, I have a keen ear for regional differences (East Tennessee is distinctly different from the generic “Southern Accent” that many actors use for almost any southern character, and the native New Orleans accent is NOT Southern at all!!)

With the advent of the internet and YouTube, it is fairly easy to find an accurate model. If I were shopping my own book, I would consider it simply part of the voice actor’s job to develop an ear for the differences and to know which ones s/he can reproduce — as much as gun research, for example, would be expected from a writer of a book about gun collectors.

One of my pet peeves is the way particular accents are frequently butchered, even if I could overlook the regional issues. Like fingernails on a blackboard to me — I simply cannot listen, no matter how good the book otherwise. I’d much prefer the entire thing be read in Standard American Broadcast Speech than tolerate a sloppy attempt at a dialect.

Thank you so much. I guess I am still humbled by the process. I’m like a little kid when I hear someone else read something I wrote, especially when they have a great instrument. I agree with the dialect thing, but when it’s well done and you hear it done the way you intended, it’s pretty cool.

Ah yes – the magic of performance. My playwright buds have said the same thing about the first reading of every new work.

If I wrote fiction I’d voice most of the female characters myself (theatre was my first career, so it would be such fun to revisit in that manner) — and get one or two of my acting friends to do the males.

Not sure how I’ll handle the audios for what I write – but first I have to get my non-fiction-self-help into print, so I’ll figure that out when I get there (after rereading your series, of course.)